Idiotic pranks are almost as old as radio itself, a tried and tested staple of the commercial breakfast market, replicated to exhaustion the world around.

Australia does not have a monopoly on them, though ours seem, when they go wrong, to be the most egregious.

Teenage girls tied to lie detectors and questioned about their sex lives, school students weeping when told - untruthfully - they have failed their HSC and now the death of a British nurse who was the victim of an Australian radio station prank aimed at the Duchess of Cambridge.

Advertisement

The line between black humour and offence is difficult to measure, perhaps necessarily so. As a culture, we wrestled with that very question when The Chaser broadcast a sketch which seemed to mock dying children. In fact, it was aimed at charities, though in the aftermath the finer detail was lost.

So when does funny become offence? In the motive? When the target is a vulnerable member of society, such as a teenager, or in the case of the Duchess of Cambridge, a pregnant woman being treated in hospital and the staff caring for her?

Or when, as has happened in this case, subsequent events have overtaken the original stunt?

The truth is we may never know. Nor fully understand.

And yet there has to be a line in the sand. A measure by which a sensible society sets limits to protect the vulnerable from such pranks and, in a modern society, the media fallout which inevitably follows them when they go wrong. The latter, in particular, is a major issue at play here.

The events themselves - an embarrassing prank call and its humiliating aftermath - are not so terrible when looked at in isolation. They happen often, usually with no significant consequences.

But in 2012, and in a society ruled by social networks and the excoriating kangaroo court of the Twitterverse, the aftermath can too easily snowball into something far more sinister.

And that is where the real responsibility of radio stations sits. Michael Christian and Mel Greig were hardly motivated by a desire for such an extraordinary, and tragic, outcome. They will wrestle with these events for many years to come, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

Now we are grappling not just with the death of the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, but a fiery blowback against the pranksters, Christian and Greig. All of it risks turning into a cyclone of blame from which there is rarely any useful outcome, except to fuel talkback and tabloid media.

The King Edward VII hospital prank is not funny. It wasn't funny when it was played. Not for some hand-wringing sense of righteous judgment, but simply because one of its targets - a mother to be whose pregnancy was causing so much discomfort that she had to be hospitalised - was so vulnerable, and its effect - to have details of her medical condition broadcast on radio - was an appalling breach of privacy.

What holds a civilised society together is an understanding of action and consequence, a duty of care to each other that allows some elasticity for fair mischief and good humour, but does not contravene a handful of basic tenets: humanity, dignity, compassion, respect.

There is a lesson in all of this. Commercial radio, and perhaps the media at large, would do well to learn it.

8 Dec The nurse who took the prank call of two Australian radio DJs asking questions about the Duchess of Cambridge’s health has been found dead and is suspected to have killed herself. All times in AEDT.

8 Dec MENTAL health experts hold grave concerns for the radio presenters at the centre of the royal prank call controversy, urging the public not to blame them for the suspected suicide of the nurse who took the call.

While the family of a UK nurse comes to grips with her suspected suicide, tens of thousands of people around the world have taken to social media to argue who is to blame and a radio network has suspended all advertising, fearing a consumer backlash.

Broadcaster Southern Cross Austereo cuts its losses quickly - and perhaps only temporarily - with swift decision to pull all advertising from Sydney station at the centre of the royal phone prank scandal.

It is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions that the nurse who put the prank call through to Princess Kate's ward should have taken her life. Just as it is an enormous tragedy when anyone takes their life.